


drug interactions

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bruises, Coercion, Established Relationship, Graphic Description, Hurt Steve Rogers, Jealousy, M/M, Medication, Oral Sex, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Self-Hatred, Sex, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-09-28 00:57:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10060313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Bucky's new medications have some fucked up new side effects. Hopefully.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> takes place post civil war in a scenario where bucky does not go back into the icebox

So Bucky moved in with them, because if he wasn't with Steve, if he wasn't under his supervision, he would be in a facility somewhere. Nobody still quite sure how much Hydra was in him. Nobody wanted him free. Only the assurance of a super soldier's physical strength (tempered with the Falcon's tactical know-how) had earned them their current compromise: one apartment, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, shared Netflix.

Sam hated it. He didn't want Bucky there, but he never said no once to Steve, knowing what Bucky meant to him. It wasn't even a conversation. It was a shared look at the time and an 'of course'; of course they would take him in, even when that meant Bucky disrupting a routine that had become domestic. Of course he was suspicious at first, and he never let down his guard, and he made a childish point of demonstrating their relationship to Bucky’s face in a proprietary, almost aggressive way. He put an arm around Steve's waist or shoulders at any given excuse. He kissed him hello or good-bye a little too long and a little too deeply. Especially when Bucky was there.

Sam didn't trust Bucky as far as he could throw him. Not even after intense (and constant) psychiatric evaluations.

When he was gone, Steve offered Bucky a bit of physical affection, unasked for and mostly unreturned, because Bucky was largely unreactive, and unprompting. But he did let Steve hold him once or twice, just because Steve couldn’t stand to see him blank and alone. Let Steve touch his hair, which was a bit longer now. He didn’t seem happy. But he was safe.

Bucky was on some new medication lately, the kind that made him quiet.

Sam had been gone for about a day. Bucky was preoccupied with something, staying alone in his room, and Steve found how odd it was to suddenly have the place to himself, practically. Sam didn’t make up their plans, exactly, but he was often the one to propose them, because he was always full of ideas. Movies. Date nights.

Maybe he would ask Bucky to a movie.

He took a shower.

He touched himself a little, mostly doing it for Sam, thinking that when he got back Steve could tell him ‘I touched myself thinking about you in the shower’, and he would appreciate that and he would probably like it and one thing would lead to another. But only a little. Nothing he could image was quite as good as the real thing. His mind showed him only faces, not acts, not motion. He let his erection fade and finished the shower.

He wrapped a towel around his waist and sat on his bed. Their bed. His bed for the weekend, and he was just now realizing that the last time he had slept alone was god, six months ago? Without catastrophe, even on missions, he and Sam had largely managed to bunk up together, even if it was just one snoozing on their shoulder while the other kept watch.

There was a light knock and he looked up.

Buck leaned on the doorframe, knuckles poised against the open door. It was the first time Steve had seen him all day.

“Hi,” said Steve, honestly surprised at having him initiate contact. “Come in.”

Bucky came in, paused, and there was an awkward moment before Steve patted the corner of the bed, the only real spot to sit in the room. With Sam away he had already managed to leave about ten different objects on five different surfaces. Another ping of loneliness. Bucky was there, but he still felt unreal. Distant.

Bucky sat next to him.

“I was actually gonna knock on your door in a bit, see if you wanted to catch a movie,” said Steve.

“Yeah?” Bucky’s one word reply, a question, said nothing, and neither did his expression. He was frustratingly, unsettlingly blank.

“How you feeling?” asked Steve. He didn’t mention the medication, but up close he saw that the shadows under Bucky’s eyes didn’t look as deep. He hoped he slept better. He knew Bucky often didn’t sleep. He would wake next to Sam and hear Bucky opening the fridge, or just going to the spot in the living room in front of the broad window.

“Good,” said Bucky, and he looked at him. He reached over to his knee, slid his hand up, and stroked the inside of his naked thigh.

For a solid second Steve didn’t realize he was doing it, it was too absurd, and then he moved automatically to shove his hand away.

Bucky seized the wrist of his protesting hand, in his metal one, and slammed it to the bed. It was just as automatic, immediate. And his expression was the same.

He loosened his grip on Steve’s leg, only to stroke up it, with the backs of his fingernails, to the edge of the towel.

Steve seized his wrist again. “Bucky,” he said. And he would have, should have only said that, in warning, in reproach, and Bucky would have understood that, but he looked up, and he saw the same nothing on Bucky’s face. “Stop,” he said, then. And was frightened when the clarification brought no change.

Bucky’s hand stayed where it was.

“Lay back,” he said.

Steve felt something gut-ugly stir in him, something like fear, and was confused by it. “No,” he said. And then again, more clearly, “Bucky, stop it.”

Bucky let go of him. But then his iron fist wrapped itself around Steve’s throat, and he dragged him to the head of the bed and pressed him down. Steve grabbed at his fingers with both hands to get back his air, gasping. It had been nearly a year since he’d fought the winter soldier. He’d forgotten the undeterrable strength of those fingers.  
Bucky released his throat only to grab both of his wrists, yanking them up above his head and crossing them so he could trap both wrists in his iron, and with a free hand he tossed away the towel, already loose from the struggle, and hiked apart his legs, spreading them with his own thighs.

“Relax,” he said. “It’ll hurt more if you don’t.”

“Bucky, don’t.” Shock paralyzed him almost more than the pain of the new ache in his throat, the way the bones of his wrist were pressing together. Disbelief more than anything arrested his resistance, looking down at Bucky undoing his pants. He saw Bucky’s hard dick and something in his mind hit a wall, the utter surreality that was Bucky, pinning him down and taking out his dick to fuck him.

Bucky penetrated him, pressing his dick inside with a low grunt. And Steve clamped his teeth shut against the cry of pain, bared his teeth and put his head back as it hurt, as Bucky adjusted his angle and continued to shove his dick inside of him, and it hurt with every inch.

When it had settled to the hilt, Bucky released the hand that had helped to spread his legs, he didn’t need it. Steve was trapped down there with the weight of his body, with the pain, like a butterfly pinned to a board. And Bucky put his head down. There was human emotion on his face for the first time, some sort of relief, some triumph. And pleasure. His hair fell against Steve’s throat, and then his mouth, up against his ear. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this,” he said.

Steve could say nothing, his teeth still closed against the pain, knowing any sound he made was going to come out a whimper.

“You know I can hear you through that wall,” said Bucky. “Every night, I can hear him fucking you. I know exactly what you sound like, getting fucked. Kind of like you’re about to cry, gasping, but like you love it, like it hurts, and you love that it hurts.”

He wasn’t fucking him yet, he was just lying on top of him with his dick buried, and Steve unbound his tongue enough to whisper, “Stop,” one more, useless time.

Bucky moved, maybe half an inch, and Steve felt him shiver over just how good that felt.

“I put my ear to the wall and I listen just to hear you get fucked, and I stroke myself off over it. I can’t fucking stand it. That sound you make when you come - I try to time it, hold back just right, and when I get it right I come just as you make that noise.”

He fucked him just a little, rocking his hips once, twice, only out and in maybe half an inch. He grunted in Steve’s ear. Even that gentle fucking hurt, spreading him, like he was getting it all shoved up inside him again.

“I know you could make me stop,” said Bucky. “Maybe. If you hurt me bad. That’s why you’re not trying. You spent half your life protecting me, saving me. You don’t want to hurt me.”

“Don’t make me,” Steve said, gritted through his teeth, pleading way more than he was threatening. “Bucky, just stop. Please. It hurts.”

He sounded like he was begging, like a kid, but there was still a part of his brain sure that Bucky had no idea what he was doing. If he explained it to him, if he made him understood that it hurt, he didn’t want this-

“I know it hurts, Steve,” murmured Bucky into his ear. “Sorry.” And he fucked him a little more, a little less gently, really feeling his dick in there. He made soft sounds in Steve’s ear, sharp but relaxed “Ah”s with every stroke. He pulled most of the way out and then slowly, mercilessly, pressed all the way back in. Steve couldn’t stop himself whimpering. It hurt. It hurt like his first time, but then Sam had been slower, softer, and when Steve had said “Wait” he had stopped and he had waited.

“I know he knows,” continued Bucky, taking his time explaining his rape, as he was taking his time in fucking Steve. “He’s seen the way I look at you. The way everybody looks at you.” He took a break to kiss the base of his ear, neck him gently as he was rubbing his free hand, his human hand, his thumb in soothing circles around Steve’s hipbone. “He hates it. That’s why he hates me. He can’t prove a damn thing, he can’t say anything to you without sounding jealous, and that’s why he’s always got his hands on you. When he thinks you think I’m not watching. Putting you up against the fridge to kiss you, grind you up against it, coming up behind you at the counter to press on your ass. Running his hands down your pants, stroking you under the blanket on the couch. He wants me to see every second of it, to know that I can’t touch you. Oh, fuck.” Losing control of his pacing, his self control slipping for a moment, he pulled out, readjusted with his hand, and thrust all the way inside again. Steve cried right against his ear. “God it feels so good. Sorry, sorry.”

Still all the way in, Bucky took up thrusting with just the back inch, just the base of his dick, barely moving, just enough to move Steve feel the whole thing inside of him. Slowly. Constantly now.

“Back in 1944, everyone wanted you,” continued Bucky. “Yeah, the men, all of them, anyone who had ever seen a human being, they all _wondered_ what it would be like. You never saw the looks. You were too damn nice. I looked at them like I would kill them, and they all backed off, and they all thought you were mine.” He laughed into his shoulder. “You came into my fucking tent. Always it was with a map or an idea, you were so focused. Up all night strategizing. And they all thought I had you on your back. And I thought sometimes maybe I should have.

“God I should have fucked you.” Kissing his neck again, pressing his whole face into his neck, smelling him. Running his free hand up and down his chest, back down to caressing his open thighs. “I could have. Some night, any night, I should have slipped into your bedroll. When it was hot you slept half naked anyway, I could have been inside of you before you even woke up.

“And you would have let me.”

Still fucking him gently, but relentlessly, with the thick base of his dick.

“All that super strength and you would have let me, because I would have persisted, and it would have been hurt me, or let me, and you would have let me. Even with it hurting, not knowing what I was doing, you would have laid there and let me do it, let me fuck you until I had come in you. You would have let me do it every night.

“Just like this.”

He fucked him harder. He actually fucked him now, and his free hand grabbed Steve’s dick and started rubbing, pumping it without mercy. He straightened up, looked down at Steve’s face as he fucked him, and rubbed his dick, Steve’s teeth still clenched and eyes closed now against the mass of stimulus. Bucky spat into his hand, went back to stroking his dick. Stroking it. Rolling his hips as he fucked him, searching for just the right spots, fucking more earnestly but with the lower half of his dick, less harshly, keeping him open.

“I don’t know why I never did it,” he said, his breathing panting now. “I thought to myself a few times - after the war, we would go back to Brooklyn, and I would put you down on the bed and teach you how good it felt. But we both died. We died and then we were both alive again, and somebody else had already taught you.”

It wasn’t rage or jealousy on his face now, it was something more like grief. He looked down at Steve and fucked him hard a couple of times, making him finally give up and gasp audibly, needing that from him. Some kind of reaction.

“I don’t want to know if I’m better than him or not,” he said bleakly. “I know it doesn’t feel good. I know it hurts. I’m sorry.” And he kept fucking him, and Steve, in surrender, had given up to groaning against the inside of his arm, every pump of Bucky’s dick making his chest jump in exhalation. His face, throat, and chest were red.

Bucky stopped for a moment, coming still inside of him, his hand going quiet on Steve’s dick. Steve took the moment’s respite to pant, chest heaving. He didn’t ask him to stop. He didn’t say anything. He looked at the wall. He felt like he couldn't breathe, though he could see himself breathing.

“Steve, if you want me to stop, tell me one thing honestly.”

Steve licked his lips, swallowed, looked up at him with wet eyes.

“If you’ve never thought about this your entire life, I’ll stop.

“Tell me that you’ve never, not once, touched yourself and thought about me. Thought about me fucking you and how it would feel. If it would hurt. Panted underneath someone else and imagined even for a second that they were me. Got off on it. Wished that I would crawl into your bedroll and strip you and fuck you. If you’ve never thought about it, wanted, not even one time, not even a little, tell me, and I’ll stop.”

Steve looked up at him. He didn’t say anything. He shut his eyes, turned his face, and buried it into the side of his own arm.

Bucky released his wrists. He dropped his iron hand to Steve’s hips, holding them down as he returned to fucking him. Deep, hard.

Steve left one arm up by his face, panting, groaning into it, and the other, he wrapped around Bucky as he sank down on him again, Bucky’s face in his neck, Bucky kissing his ear while he fucked him close, Bucky whispering in his ear, “I love you.” with hot, almost-spent breath.

Bucky dedicated both hands to holding his hips, caressing him, and let Steve stroke himself off.

There was no more narrative now. Bucky fucked him with a purpose, kissing his mouth, lapping the getting-fucked drool right off his tongue. Steve buried his pain in his fingernails, straight down Bucky’s back where he knew he wanted them. His hips jerked defensively, automatically. He hardly had to stroke himself as he had to just keep his dick in his hand and following the rhythm.

“I want you to come,” said Bucky, straight into his mouth. “I wanna hear it.”

Bucky wanted him to, and so he did it.

He pushed himself over the edge, felt it punch him in the base of his spine, clenched both of his hands into fists. He gasp-moaned against Bucky’s lips. He came all at once and in small, fading jerks, feeling all pain obliterated into pleasure and stupidity. “Yeah, that’s it,” whispered Bucky.

Cum was rolling off his stomach. The dick that was still inside of him, reoccurred to him, and each new pump earned a small whimper of hyperstimulated nerves. Bucky didn’t hear him, Bucky was fucking to his own orgasm, and when he got there he collapsed on top of Steve with a flurry of expletives and a hard-grabbing of both hips that nearly crushed Steve’s right side. He would have finger-shaped bruises from the iron there for nearly two weeks.  
Bucky lay on top of him, inside of him. They both gradually came to a standstill. Sweating, then sweaty. Panting to slow, measured breaths of recovery.

“Take it out,” said Steve.

“Just give me a minute,” murmured Bucky against his chin.

“Bucky,” said Steve. “Please.”

And Bucky finally listened. He pulled out, got off of Steve, and lay on his back. Whatever emotion came to him, whether it was satisfaction, regret, horror, Steve didn’t know, because he turned over to curl up on his side.  
Every moment of the last hour replayed itself to him, and the pain reoccurred relentlessly. He didn’t think there wasn’t one part of his body Bucky hadn’t touched. That hadn’t sweated. That hadn’t struggled, or trembled, or succumbed. All of him hurt. He wanted whatever was better than his version of aspirin, whatever that could do whatever alcohol couldn’t. He wanted a white void.

Eventually Bucky got up and left. He didn’t go back to his room, he went out the front door, Steve heard it shut behind him.

He didn’t get up. He lay there until the sweat and the cum went cold on his skin, thinking about how Bucky had come inside of him, and thinking that now he was going to have to take another shower.

Sam was going to be home in less than 24 hours.

-

He pretended to be asleep when Sam came home.

He had taken at least three showers, but he was still convinced that he smelled cum, that he smelled like Bucky’s cum. It was haunting his nostrils. He couldn’t get it out of his head.

He made sure that the lights were off. He didn’t want Sam to see the marks Bucky had left on him.

And when Sam came home, of course he didn’t try to wake him, turn on the lights, he just slid into bed next to him. Steve was horrified by how the feeling of Sam’s bare skin made his crawl. Lights off had been a mistake, it turned out - unable to see Sam, all he could imagine was Bucky, Bucky come home to fuck him again, until Sam spoke in his ear.

“Hey,” he murmured. “You asleep?”

Steve could feel his erection. Sam would never have pressed him into anything, but he wanted it. After a few nights apart, they usually fucked until the bed almost broke.

“No,” whispered Steve. Bucky’s hand around his throat had damaged his voice - god, he hoped temporarily.

“I missed you,” whispered Sam, and began kissing his neck. Steve's skin was crawling. He wanted to vomit - not just because it made him remember being raped, but because it was Sam that was making him feel sick, Sam who had done nothing wrong, Sam who loved him. He wanted to grab his hands, almost break his wrists, force him away. Sam shouldn’t be touching him. Didn’t deserve to be touching him. Not after Bucky had fucked him, just hours ago, sweated on him, come inside him, made him come. His skin was dirty. And crawling.

Another voice insisted that he had to get back on the horse.

Another, logically, horribly, said that he needed to give Sam a reason for the bruises, the hickies. An excuse. _It was you._

And another part of him was too numb, too frozen, to fight.

Sam reached around and put a hand down his boxers, gently rubbing him, and all Steve could think of was how he had jerked himself to orgasm while Bucky was raping him.

Sam sucking, kissing on his earlobes.

“Is this okay?” he murmured, stroking his thighs, gently pressing his dick against his leg.

“Fuck me,” said Steve, and arched his back into him. He could hear Sam’s breathing increase.

“I’ll get the lube-”

“No,” said Steve, the liar. He pressed back against Sam, grinding his ass against him, too tempting to let go of. “Just fuck me.”

Sam’s voice was torn between heat and indecision, asked, “Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

Because he needed it. He needed the excuse. He couldn’t stand the pain between his legs, and how much he wanted it to be Sam hurting him instead.

“God,” whispered Sam, and he was pulling down Steve’s boxers, his own pants, with an urgency born of days without fucking him. And Steve rolled onto his stomach and pressed his face into the sheets.

Sam pressed carefully inside of him, exactly in the way Bucky hadn’t, and even without lube, he was fucking him gently, slowly, kissing into his ear, whispering “Is that okay? All right?”

“Harder,” whispered Steve, and even when Sam fucked him harder, it wasn’t enough. Sam linking their fingers together over his head.

“Is that okay?” he murmured.

“Make it hurt,” said Steve, almost begging, coming close to crying.

Sam had never hurt him before, had probably never hurt anybody even if they begged for it, but confused, and trying to please him, he tried. Which made it worse. Because it did hurt.

Steve lay with his face shoved into the sheets, trembling, and he had to turn over, and he had to put Sam’s hands exactly where Bucky’s had been, to explain the bruises later, and he felt sick. It hurt. He didn’t want it. He was replaying the rape, but with Sam, Sam kissing him, Sam stroking his trembling thighs, Sam whispering into his ears that he loved him, he wanted him, was it okay. He felt like he was going to vomit. He felt like he wanted to seize this Sam/Bucky hybrid, this invisible person fucking him, and break their neck. But he could only lay there, legs spread, and mumble, “I love you,” and get fucked, harder and harder, and wrap his legs around it, and let the pain do its work, until he was coming, again.

The second after he came he wanted to vomit. Instead, he lay there, legs open, still kissing Sam with an open mouth, letting him finish inside of him, feeling each last thrust with agony.

Sam came, and when he had finished kissing Steve, deeply, lovingly, Steve turned his head, and Sam eased off of him.

“You okay?” he said. “Was that too much?”

Steve wanted to go to the bathroom and puke, but Sam would see the marks then, see that they were already hours old, and he would know.

“I’m good,” he said. “I love you.” He repeated it knowing that it was the one thing that Sam would really trust, and looped an arm around Sam’s neck and started kissing him, not letting him speak. His mouth was numb. His arms wrapped around Sam were numb. The part of him that was the planner, the good soldier, the rationalizer, was remembering the terms of Bucky's lack of imprisonment and thinking,

_At least it was me._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> people wanted to read some more so here is more. will prob be another part or two

Steve slept in the morning after, and every morning after that, waiting until Sam had left for the shower to sit up and take inventory.

His body was numb and distant, ghostlike. His head was absolutely empty. It felt stuffy and cold, hypothermic, working only on an industrial level. Coolly working out his next deceit.

“I am so sorry,” said Sam at breakfast, probably for the tenth time. He had gotten up to get the orange juice and was stopped by the dark bruising on Steve’s shoulder. It had climbed the side of his neck and brushed his collarbone, where his shirt gapped open to reveal it. Sam touched his neck exceptionally gently.

Steve laughed falsely over his cornflakes. “You don't have to keep apologizing,” he said. “That's what I asked for. Since when are you so vanilla?”

That earned him a moment's respite. “Vanilla,” Sam grumped, muttering as he dug through the fridge. “Since when are you not?”

A knot tied itself in Steve’s stomach and tightened irresistibly.

“Is Barnes around?” asked Sam as he returned to the table. “I haven't seen him since I got back.”

Steve attempted a casual shrug, then remembered that Bucky's absence would worry him under other circumstances, and attempted a look of mild concern. Sam watched his expressions change with the half-frown of someone who knew his face too well.

“Is something up?” Sam asked. “He's seemed okay lately. Since those new meds.”

Sam asking about Bucky. Sam giving a shit about Bucky, not because he gave a shit, but because he knew how much it mattered to Steve.

Let that be the excuse.

“I don't know,” said Steve, stirring his breakfast uneaten. Obviously, he had no appetite. He found that he couldn't look Sam in the eye. Instead he followed the surface of the tabletop, the patterns of knots and whorls in the wood, swirling without conclusion. “He's… different.”

Steve knew exactly how Sam was looking at him, with undeserved worry, neglecting his own breakfast.

“Do we need to go look for him?” asked Sam. “Do you think he could have gotten into trouble?”

If Sam knew what Bucky had done, he would try to kill him. There was no doubt in Steve’s mind. And here Sam was trying to help Bucky. Talking about him. Steve glanced up and saw the honest light in his eyes.

God. Sam had almost surpassed resignation.

There was almost actual concern on his face.

If Sam knew what Bucky had done he would have killed him in a second, at any opportunity.

The front door opened, and Sam turned in his chair, resting an arm over the back. “Well, look who it is,” he said. “You been out all night?”

Bucky stood there with a brown bag of what looked like groceries, like a good roommate. He didn't look tired. He didn't look blank. He looked... casual, almost human, and he closed the door behind him and set the bag on the counter. “Farmers market is on now,” he said. “Among other things, I got some apples. Fruit for a couple of fruits.”

He tossed Sam an apple, who caught it with a surprised laugh. “Was that a joke? I'm not even gonna comment on the casual homophobic dig, I'm just impressed to see you putting two sentences together. That new stuff you're on must be doing you some good.”

Bucky bit into an apple with a loud crunch. Steve remembered viscerally, painfully the feeling of Bucky’s teeth on his neck, his panting in his ear.

He pushed his chair back and dumped his bowl before giving himself a chance to look at either of them. “I'm taking off,” he said, grabbing his jacket and slinging it over his shoulder. He opened the door and was gone before Sam had the chance to ask where he was headed.

-

He couldn't avoid Sam forever.

Sam was silent on that first night when Steve came in late, far too late to initiate sex, to sleep on the other side of the bed. Sam even said nothing the first time Steve dodged a morning kiss, with a poorly delivered joke about bad breath. He didn't even try to join Steve in the shower, which was the first time that Steve gave way to absolute and shaking physical panic. He pushed his knuckles into his teeth and let the water absorb the sounds of what felt like losing his mind.

What was he supposed to do?

He couldn't touch Sam. He couldn't look at Sam. Even the water on his back felt like intrusive, crawling fingers. Whenever he was alone with Bucky for even a split second in the kitchen, his heart started pounding out of control. Every day he felt sharper and looser all at once. He had snapped at Rhodes over a minor tactical question earlier, not a big deal or even something he _wouldn't_ argue about, but the rest of them had looked up with raised eyebrows at the sound of his voice. Unhinged. He knew he was. He didn't know where his seams were.

Sam didn't even ask what Steve was lying about, only accepted the lie in silence, not remarking on the four foot distance between them that Steve maintained at all times, seeking only occasional eye contact with an injured patience.

The unspoken ‘was it something I did?’ hung for almost two whole weeks.

Meanwhile, Bucky was full of a living color that probably hadn't been there for decades. It was as if he had stolen some light from Steve when he was lying on top of him. He peeled potatoes in the sink, whistling. He cleaned the things he had discarded and forgotten about. His hair was clean, he folded his clothes. The Winter Soldier seemed a nightmare of the past.

“Must be the medication,” was the constant remark, but in his gut, Steve knew a different truth.

Bucky was alive because he had let him fuck him. Because Bucky could remember the taste and the feel of his mouth, could replay Steve’s moaning and the desperate grabbing of his hips. The fucking was burnt into both of them. For Steve, it was a hot brand that wouldn't heal and hurt to touch. For Bucky- it was keeping him warm.

“I want to talk to you,” said Sam.

He said it after a mission, when they were both covered in soot, because those missions were the only time Steve was some semblance of himself. In the fight, he could forget what it felt like to be lying flat on his back, trapped, penetrated, and he could put the pain into concrete and body armor.

“We need to talk,” said Sam, more quietly.

They stood in the hallway, where the others had filed away to clean up, and Sam looked battered and tired. Steve looked at him with a bitter longing mixed with revulsion. He envisioned going home, sitting across from him at the table. He imagined taking Sam’s hand and how warm and welcome it would be. He imagined not lying, trying to explain what had happened. _’He came into my room. He held me down. He wasn't himself. I didn't want to hurt him.’_

‘I'm sorry’. ‘I'm fine’?

He could already picture Sam’s rage.

Physically Sam couldn't kill Bucky, but that didn't mean he wouldn't try. Even if Steve could defuse that, there was no way Sam would keep his mouth shut about Bucky's actions. Sam wouldn't rest until Bucky was back in the ice. In the ice, or somewhere in the ground, buried under a mile of concrete like a nuclear warhead. Bucky would never see the light of day again. Steve could already see Bucky’s eyes as they had been months ago, pulverized and blank, as they downed him and locked him up again. And how many lives would Bucky take, willingly or unwillingly, before they captured him? How long would he live in the ice before they even considered another chance at rehabilitation? How many more drug cocktails and psychiatric procedures would he have to endure?

Bucky was free now. More than that, he was _alive_. He was so heartbreakingly close to normal. He was so close. He was almost the man Steve had known. Fought with. Fought for. Steve would have killed for him.

He would kill for him.

He would do worse.

“I cheated,” Steve said.

Sam almost didn't react. He stared at Steve, clearly baffled, because that didn't line up with what he knew about Steve, who he knew so well.

“I slept with someone else,” said Steve. He put the nail in the coffin. “It was Bucky.”

Sam stared at him.

Steve saw the change in his eyes- from confusion to numb understanding.

That made sense to him.

“Oh,” said Sam. His voice already had a hard, hurt quality to it. He was withdrawing. He was realizing that he had been right.

All of Sam's paranoid thoughts, all the intrusions of Bucky into their lives, all the fears that Steve would stop wanting him, those thoughts that Sam had repressed out of trust and love, became irreversibly true in his eyes.

“There's not much to talk about,” said Steve, hoping that Sam would disagree, heartbreakingly sure that Sam would fight him on this.

“No,” said Sam. “There isn't.”


	3. Chapter 3

Steve had never known that heartbreak would come in so many different flavors.

When he was younger he had known the dull heartbreak of orphaning and war, accompanied by the duller but more constant ache that was the disappointment of his body and his self. Becoming Captain America had almost cured that wound. Bucky’s loss had scored it- burnt it. That had been a new heartbreak, and one horrifyingly resistant to booze, to injury, and to denial.

Peggy.

That had been a gentler, slower heartbreak. To this day he wasn’t sure which he preferred: seeing a loved one plummet to their death with brutal immediacy, or knowing the sureness of their approaching death and sitting with them and waiting for it. Watching their life narrow to a pinpoint. Waiting for the day when they would breathe their last. Trying to be prepared. Knowing you never would be.

Sam moving out was a kind of heartbreak Steve had never realized could happen.

It was technically Sam;s apartment, but he gave it up, at least in a silent ‘you have X months to get the hell out’ kind of way.

“You can put out my stuff,” Sam said. He gave his instructions dead-eyed. He had the stiff, bland voice and hard shoulders of a soldier. “Just the important things. You know what to grab. I'll swing by and pick it up later.” It went unspoken that there was no way in hell he was going to collect them personally and risk seeing Bucky. He probably didn't want to see either of them. He wasn't even looking at Steve now, as he pulled up hotel reservations on his phone, making his plans, removing himself from Steve’s life with a coolness that he had no response to.

What was he supposed to say?

“Okay.”

-

The apartment was empty when Steve got there, and the sound of the door closing behind him was loud and final.

He put his back to the door and looked out dizzily over the living space, the coffee table, the kitchen counter. It rang with comfort and domesticity. Bowl of fruit. Box for the recycling. A row of DVDs. He remembered Sam's loud and benign protests over Steve insisting on working his way through all the major films he had missed - _all_ of them. Sam had been stuck humming Greased Lightning for a week, and when Steve caught him at it when he was doing the dishes and laughed, Sam had slung the wet washcloth at him.

Steve stood with his back against the door for a long time.

Was this really happening?

As it often did, his mind defaulted to a tactical approach, analyzing every possible action and outcome.

No, there was nothing he could do. No, there was nothing he could do. This was it. This was his compromise.

He packed up Sam’s things as quickly as he possibly could. He packed Sam's clothes in his suitcase before he could stop to smell them, bagged the toiletries before he could remember the scent of his aftershave, slipped Sam's laptop into his case, almost managed not to remember watching Hello Dolly in bed with the computer propped up on the sheets, their touching knees. Sam had threatened to fall asleep repeatedly during, but he never had.

A violent impulse struck him as he reentered the living area; he wanted to chuck the suitcase straight through that broad window.

Ninety five years and he had learned nothing, he had nothing.

He was never going to get anything back.

-

After Steve had left Sam's things out by the door, he left. He got on his bike and he drove meaninglessly until it was dark outside, and then he drove some more, and when he went home around 4am, Sam’s things were gone.

He threw his jacket down on the couch. He was probably going to end up sleeping there, if he ever got to sleep. He was definitely not going to sleep in their bed and subject himself to Sam’s smell and his absence. What had been absolutely repellant since the rape was now the only thing he wanted: to bury his face in Sam’s chest or neck, and find comfort there.

“He left, didn't he?”

Steve looked up, and there was Bucky emerging from the hall, apparently straight from sleep. His hair was tousled but his eyes had that peculiar alertness in them, that watching. Steve knew that look from the black forests. The sniper’s watchfulness.

But it wasn't just the Winter Soldier, it was Bucky- perhaps, Bucky as he had always been.

Bucky combined his hair back out of his face with his fingers and looked at Steve. He _really_ looked at him. Not out of a drugged mask, or a brainwashed one, but with the eyes that had watched Steve when he was small and fragile, kept him from tripping, or from parading full march into his own stupidity. Patience, softness. _Sympathy._

“What did you tell him?” Bucky asked.

Steve punched him directly in the face.

Bucky hit the wall with the force of the blow, but didn't make a sound except for the physical meat-packing sound of Steve’s fist breaking his nose. He put a hand to his face, and as he looked up at Steve, blood was running freely between his fingers. He didn't say a word. His expression behind his fingers was an unspoken _’Are you done yet?’_

Steve wasn't done.

He grabbed Bucky by the loose collar of his sleeping shirt, took him off the wall so as not to break it, and punched him again. The force and angle of the punch would have sent Bucky to the ground if Steve hadn't still been holding onto him.

Bucky made no move to stop him, and Steve bent him over the kitchen counter and tried to break every bone in his face.

He had no conscious thought of stopping, but he did eventually. The wet sounds of the impact and Bucky's forced wheezing breaths were the only things that registered in his head, when he stopped, there was absolute silence. He was sure there had to be sound from the streets, or from some other home, but he heard nothing. He was in a white void. He looked down at Bucky’s bludgeoned face. He registered his own knuckles, covered in blood, and that he had broken at least one of his fingers, probably two.

Bucky was still conscious, somehow. He squinted up at Steve. Judging that he had apparently finished, and reached up to put his hand on Steve’s hand. It was wrapped around his throat. Steve's fingers tightened instinctively, in a ludicrous fear of Bucky's touch, in a repulsive desire to squeeze, and then he controlled himself.

Steve released him and stepped away. Bucky straightened slowly and painfully, one blood spattered hand flat on the stone countertop, the other touching his face. He reached, unseeing, and scrabbled over the countertop for a hand towel. He found it, and pressed it against his face with his first hiss of pain.

“Do you feel better now?” he asked, and even through the thickness of the blood and damage, with his tired voice, Steve knew that he was actually asking.

Steve looked at his own bloody hands and tried to figure that out for himself.

“What you told me,” he said. “About how you were always wanted to- to do that. What you did to me. How you always planned on it. Was that true? Is that who you really were? Are? And I just didn't see it?”

Bucky held the towel to his face in a long, still silence. Eventually he surrendered his answer in a whisper.

“I don't remember.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any requests for how you guys want this fic to progress or end?


	4. Chapter 4

He helped Bucky wash the blood off in the sink, carefully pressing the damp towel to the battered back of his head, where it had slammed repeatedly against the hard countertop. It was a miracle that Steve hadn't broken his neck.

He had wanted to.

Bucky bent over the sink with the water running, washing his hand over his face and breaking through the flow of blood only temporarily, one side of his face showing pale before dripping red again. He was probably going to need stitches. 

Steve held Bucky’s hair back out of his face, as waves of guilt and revulsion took turns washing over him. How many times had he watched Bucky brush off an injury? Bucky help him brush off one of his? But this time it was Bucky’s blood on his hands, his imprints on Bucky’s face, and Bucky was silent. Worse. Apathetic.

Bucky’s silent acceptance of his beating was not been numbness. It was habit. The exact details of the physical abused he had endured as the Winter Soldier were unknown, but the files reclaimed from Hydra had indicated they had no problems disciplining their asset as they saw fit, and boiling his brain until it made sense to him, until he spoke pain as a language.

Rage, guilt, revulsion. Each beat of Steve’s heart was a pump of a different emotion, a different animal impulse. _I knew him. I know him. I did this to him. He’s damaged. He’s sick. He didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to. Yes I did. Yes I did._

Nothing changed the fact that Bucky had raped him, held him down, crushed his throat, spread his legs and fucked him with long-awaited relish. He remembered how hungrily Bucky had touched him. Remembered kissing him. Remembered Bucky panting that he loved him. That he was sorry. Fucking him like he couldn’t have stopped if he had tried. But he should have stopped. He hadn’t stopped.

_But he’s sick. He’s damaged. They did this to him._

The sink was absolutely splattered with blood, as was the counter, and the floor. There were fat droplets scattered all over the tile.

“I don’t have an evaluation for another month,” said Bucky, turning off the water and pressing the last clean towel to the worst side of his face. “I’ll deal with this. Nobody has to see it. You can tell them whatever you have to- whatever you told Sam.”

Steve let go of his hair almost reluctantly, miserably. For a moment his mind replaced this Bucky with the Bucky of seventy years ago, with a warm chest in the winter, and the comforting arm he had thought was platonic. How had that become this?

“I said I cheated.”

Bucky straightened up. The pressure of the towel suppressed most of the blood, but there were still light dribbles running down his neck. He looked at Steve with his better eye. “Oh,” he said.

“He thinks we’re together, now,” said Steve, and he leaned back against the counter and tossed down the soaked towel. “Do you want me to tell them that? Is that what you think is going to happen now?”

Bucky looked at him blank-faced, glanced around the apartment, and said, “I don’t see anyone else here.”

That hurt.

Steve rubbed his knuckles, thinking absently that he was going to have to come up with an excuse for their battered state, and thinking more presently about Sam and his things, gone.

“You could have asked,” he said, almost whispered. “You could have _asked_ , Bucky. Any day, any night, any time that he was gone, you could have tried. What if I had said yes?”

Would he have said yes? He thought of being a teen, of moments of friendly intimacy that had lasted suspiciously long, he thought of the war and of Bucky's fingers lingering on his, passing a mug or a sheaf of maps. He remembered bunking next to him and the nights when they hadn't been able to sleep, too preoccupied with their plans, discussing them and sometimes slipping into peculiar silence, as if realizing that they were only inches apart in the dark, but doing nothing about it.

“You wouldn't have said yes,” said Bucky with total confidence. “You don't cheat, Steve. Not at anything. You're too good. Even right now, you feel bad, don't you?” He took the towel off his face and let Steve see the whole mess, how badly he had hurt him.

_God, if anyone else had done that to him, Steve would have killed them._

Guilt encompassed him again, guilt for what he had done to Sam and now for what he had done to Bucky, and he mashed his palms against his eyes in exhaustion. He should have prevented this. He should have been more aware. He should have been able to control himself. He should have-

Bucky wrapped his arms around his waist, pushing him back against the counter and securing him there, tucking his damaged face under Steve’s ear. “It's okay,” he murmured. “It's not your fault.”

Steve took his hands away from his eyes, but kept them closed. He didn't want to see the blood, he didn't want to see how near Bucky was to him as he felt him close the distance, pressing their bodies together. Bucky was sturdy and warm and familiar and gentle. A need for comfort, for the familiar, was overcoming revulsion. Guilt wrapped his own hands in the back of Bucky's shirt, accepted Bucky's soft kiss on the corner of his jaw.

Steve didn't open his eyes. He didn't do anything. He let Bucky kiss him, let his tongue part his lips, let Bucky’s hand slide up under the back of his shirt to touch his bare skin. “You're too good of a person,” Bucky said. “You would never have done that. But you don't have to do anything. Just let me do it.”

Bucky was unbuckling his pants. He was sliding a hand underneath, flush with the skin, and wrapping his hand around Steve’s dick. He was kissing him, and he was tugging his pants down, taking Steve's dick out into the open and then he was getting on his knees.

Steve never opened his eyes. He let his head fall back, looking at the vessels in his eyelids against the kitchen lights, and he tried not to think of a thing or move or make a sound as Bucky wrapped his lips around the head of his dick and started to suck him off.

Bucky started slow. He kept his lips on the head of Steve’s dick and ran his closed fingers up and down the shaft. He stopped to kiss his way down and back up, and then paused, his breath hot on Steve’s skin. Steve could tell Bucky was looking at him for a reaction, and in his mind’s eye he saw Bucky’s bruised face looking up at him and the blood that was probably wet on his lips, and he shuddered.

Maybe that was what Bucky wanted. He put Steve back in his mouth and took the whole thing, his lips pressing and his tongue soft, and Steve felt that jerk in the base of his spine as his dick touched the back of Bucky's throat.

It felt so warm, so good.

Bucky kept deepthroating him, and with every bob of his head his lips squeezed and released the base of his dick. Whenever he reached the tip he sucked the head, once, hard and then swallowed him again, and he continued until Steve could barely stand it. He wrapped his fingers in Bucky's hair again. “Bucky,” he breathed, with no idea if he was going to say ‘stop’ or ‘please’ or ‘yes’, because he wanted to say all of them. It felt too good. It felt nauseatingly wrong.

Bucky didn't stop. He kept sucking him, steady and rhythmic and just hard enough, until Steve's fingers curled into an involuntary fist in his hair. He wanted to push with his hips, deeper into Bucky’s mouth and how good it felt. He could barely remember why he didn't want it. All he wanted was to come, to escape thinking, to escape how almost painfully hard he was. As if Bucky sensed his torment he began to suck harder, faster. Steve clenched his fist and his teeth. He gave himself over completely to the feeling, to Bucky's hot, wet mouth, and he was panting and clinging to that fistful of hair, and then he was coming in Bucky's mouth with a shuddering gasp, hips jerking, his own mouth open in an expression of near-agony.

Bucky didn't stop right away. He closed his lips and caressed the underside of his dick with his tongue, easing the last drops of cum out of him. He delicately tongued just the tip of his dick, and the raw overstimulation of such a sensitive spot nearly made Steve white out. He released Bucky's hair with a full body shudder. He couldn't hold on anymore.

Bucky finally swallowed his load, turned his head, and gently pressed his lips to the jut of Steve’s hipbone.

Steve finally opened his eyes to stare panting up at the spinning ceiling. There he saw what he had missed before, that the force of the beating had spattered blood far and wide, and there it was, a spray of dark red arcing on the ceiling over his head.


	5. Chapter 5

That night he let Bucky try to make love to him.

He wanted to see what it would be like: he wanted to see What Could Have Been, if Bucky hadn't died.

If Sam hadn't been there first.

Bucky’s blunted, hopeful tenderness was almost as sad as it was repellant. It lingered in everything from his scars to those metallic fingertips. The kindness he had possessed before Hydra had been stripped from him, and he seemed to be relearning it as he went, experimenting on Steve and his body.

They were in Bucky's bed. His room was bare of everything but the necessities, the things they had stocked it with as he moved in. He had accumulated no personal possessions. His bed felt somehow unslept in. His sheets had no smell. The pillow was unrumpled, as if he never used it, and as Bucky mounted Steve he actually tossed it aside, as if it were in the way.

Bucky alternated sucking and fucking him, and when he fucked him, he left his hands flat on the bed on either side of him, leaving Steve feeling even more divorced from the sex. It was like being drilled by a machine. Not forcibly, but too rhythmic, too unchanging.

Maybe this was what Bucky thought he wanted. Maybe he thought this was being gentle.

Steve didn't correct him. He just mirrored his lack of touch, curling his hands in the sheets. It was dark, and it was hard to see Bucky's face when they were kissing or when Bucky was down between his legs, and Steve was grateful because that meant he didn't have to see the bruises on his face, or answer the question of eye contact.

There were moments it approached feeling good. When Bucky first put his mouth on his dick, when he took it off and went up Steve's body to kiss him, reaching with his hand to guide his dick back inside of him. Each new moment of penetration made Steve grunt, made him grip the sheets a little harder. Eventually Bucky caught onto that and repeated himself. In, and almost all the way out, then all the way back in, deep and thick, and again, and again, until Steve actually felt his body heating up, and felt like reaching down to touch himself, and he spread his legs a little wider to let Bucky fuck him deeper.

But then Bucky stopped, and dropped back down to take Steve's dick into his mouth again, and cold air took over where Steve had felt Bucky's body hot on top of his.

He couldn't take this.

“Sit up,” he said raggedly, as he propped himself up. “Lay back.”

He remembered that Bucky had said the same thing to him, the first time, but he suppressed the memory violently because he had to end this.

Steve straddled Bucky, and guided his dick back inside with his own hand. He took it all the way to the hilt, and Bucky was the one to grunt then, raising his hips just a little to meet him.

Steve rode him instinctively in the way that Sam had liked. The way that felt good. He put his hands on Bucky to balance himself and felt Bucky’s abs contracting, felt how hot his skin was. He was going to come. They were both going to come. Just like this. The way that had already worked for him and Sam, who liked to watch him, and wrap Steve’s dick in his palm and let him fuck himself, rising up into Sam’s fist and down onto his cock.

_‘Wanna give me more of a hand here?’ Sam, laughingly: ‘No way- you've got the super strength, you do the work.’_

And he had done the work until he made both of them come, and inevitably Sam would end up swearing, sitting up to hold onto him, and Steve would wrap his arms around his shoulders, legs around his waist, and sometimes they came in unison and sometimes Sam came first, and sucked on his throat and whispered to him until Steve finished grinding and came against his stomach, and fuck they would both end up sticky with sweat and cum and could lay there exhausted after for an hour, just lazy and warm and together.

Bucky was breathing harder and now he touched him, reached up to grab his hips, and instantly Steve remembered the way Bucky had held him down on the bed before, Bucky’s thumb circling his hip like he was trying to soothe the rape away.

He wanted to rip those hands off of him. He wanted to rip off his own skin.

Instead, he rode hard until Bucky came breathlessly inside of him, until Bucky’s fingers buckled and his head jerked back, until Steve could feel him riding out the aftershocks beneath him, in his thighs, in his stomach, and then he sat prone and jerked off onto Bucky's stomach.

When it was over, he lay on his back and had dull postcoital thoughts. _Are we even now?_

-

Much like the first time, Bucky was the one to get up and go, only this time he went to the shower, not out of the apartment. He glanced at Steve in invitation before he went, but whatever look he got (Steve didn’t know what his own face was doing, but it was something ugly) deterred him saying anything, and so he went on his own.

Steve lay there somewhat content with his current state. It was grotesque. But he had asked for this. If Sam was gone, and he was having nightmarish, unwanted sex, at least it was of his own manufacture. And something about him seemed to deserve it.

He could barely comprehend how things had shattered so catastrophically in such a short span of time, but he was pretty sure it was his fault.

Steve observed Bucky’s empty room, and while he did, he wondered what he would do next. Go pick someone up at a bar and fuck them? Find a river and weigh himself down the bottom? Just see what would happen.

He needed to put something on.

He went to rifle through Bucky’s probably empty drawers, looking for a pair of sweats, and his fingers touched plastic. He pulled out a rattlingly full bottle of pills.

He felt a chill.

He pulled open the drawer and looked in, and immediately the throbbing began in his temple, a painful _’I told you so’_ combatting the _’I don’t believe it’_.

The desk drawer was nearly full of the little orange bottle. Each one was completely full, nothing taken. At least several months’ worth, Steve had to guess. There was so much.

_That’s it, then. It was him. He did this._

It hadn't been the medication.

Steve slammed the drawer shut and the wood crunched as he smashed the drawer back into its slot. The legs of the dresser cracked, and it sagged down the middle. The rest of the drawers gave way and slipped out, scattering socks, underwear, the pants he had been looking for, and then-

Empty pill bottles. A ludicrous number of pill bottles, but this time with nothing in them, and beneath the bottles, just, pills. A scattering of blues and yellows and whites and reds in different shapes and quantities. Ovals, diamonds, bars. An incomprehensible mess of medication. Steve sorted through it with his fingers, unbelieving. How much had Bucky been taking? _What_ had he been taking? Did _he_ even know?

Bucky emerged soaking wet in a towel, having heard the sound of the breaking dresser, his hair still half shampooed. He stared down at Steve, who stared at him, and Steve couldn't believe the words that came out of his mouth.

"Buck, are you going to be okay?"


End file.
